With clawed toes and the opposable toe on her foot, she clawed some of the hair out of the drain.

Patience. Care. Machines were predictable, once they had revealed their tricks. The challenge was to find the tricks without being discovered or caught.

She watched as the machine passed under her. Dropping from her hiding place, almost noiseless, she landed right behind it. She used all of her strength to tip it over, then wrapped the hair around the wheel and reached up, tying it to a bit of metal at the base of the hole, where a passing rock or branch had made the metal rougher.

Snagged, caught, but in a believable way.

She darted away, as voices commented on the situation, trying to riddle out what had happened. A human dropped down between the platform and the train itself, ducking low to peer between wheels, looking for the little camera drone.

The platforms were mostly empty, and most of the watchful eyes were focused on the little drone and the issue.

She stuck her head up, ears low and close to her body, tail swishing beneath her, and then made a break for a vent.

A human moved, making a run for her. Shoes slid on the smooth floor of the station platform as the human put herself between Dot and the vent.

“Not so fatht,” the woman said, as Dot skidded on the floor, stopping.

The woman was small, as humans went, and she wore a costume that covered most of her body. Her mask was roughly cone-shaped, but the paper or wire that kept the mask pointy had been dented or damaged at one point, and the nose drooped a bit. Rodent-like, with ears sticking out and back at the side, flat against the side of her head. The eyes behind the eye-holes were large, dark, and moist. If Dot unfocused her eyes a bit, it looked like there was nothing behind the eyeholes. Dark hair draped around in front of the ears and down the back of the woman’s head. As pointy as the mask was, she wore a hood or a hat with a point going the opposite direction.

She wore a jacket, denim, with a threadbare collar, a striped shirt beneath, and a thin chain belt with mousetraps dangling from it. Her socks were striped as well, extending high enough that they just barely met her denim cut-off shorts.

Dot was willing to admit that if she was going to die, at least it was at the hands of someone with a good aesthetic.

“You thall not path,” Ratcatcher said.

Dot remained where she was, frozen.

“Can you talk?” Ratcatcher asked.

“Yes,” Dot said.

“I like your colorth.”

Dot stretched out her hands in front of her, looking at her arms.

“I bet you’re beautiful when clean,” Ratcatcher said.